classic my parents...

so I'm sick again. I woke up yesterday with some congestion in my lungs. (I stayed up late the night before working on stuff & with dh gone, trying to get stuff done.) No runny nose, just stuff in the lungs... then I was up late again last night getting more work done (this time finishing up a client's order)...and today my lungs were rather bad. It was a dry cough and I could taste a tinge of blood. The cough was difficult to supress b/c of the fluid (probably mucus, but not thick) in my lungs. It felt like when you get water in your lungs from stuff going down the wrong pipe. And now I have a strange type of runny nose/drainage. Yes, so not the best of taking care of myself by staying up. Need more sleep so my immune system can work better.

Anyways...so I'm talking to my parents on the phone. And they have these classic responses:

After I coughed, my mom was like "oh are you sick?"
"yes mom, I'm sick."
"You should drink Noni. Are you drinking Noni?" says my mom.
"okay mom."
"I send you a whole case. I buy it for you for your health."
"thanks mom."
"When sick, you need drink Noni once every hour."
"okay mom."

Then my dad, another phone conversation a bit later; I cough.
"oh you're sick," he says.
"yes dad."
"You need to eat apple. Are you eating apple everyday? An apple a day helps your health."
"okay dad."
OR
"Drink Noni once every hour."
"okay dad."
"when sick, that's what you need to do. eat apple, drink Noni."
"okay dad."

Each time anyone is sick...mom's automatic response: "Drink Noni." dad's response: "Eat Apple." and sometimes it's also "Drink Noni." but mostly "Eat apple everyday."

Last time we visited them, my dad fed H apple everyday by scraping a halved-apple with a small spoon and making it puree-ish. It was sorta endearing.

Even a few days ago when I'm telling my mom about H's allergies...
"oh you should give her Noni. It will help her. Noni helps everything. Are you drinking Noni? I send you a case. Did you get the Noni?"

Tahitian Noni Juice is what mom (& now even dad) thinks is the miracle drink/supplement. They think it cures all (and my mind is going...yeah sure...like those potions that ppl used to peddle to unsuspecting fools...) Okay, I'm sure it's probably full of antioxidants and such, but GOSH... It's my mom's cure-all. She even fed H Noni when she was 1st born & only a few days old (without my consent and knowledge)! I flipped out at her. It probably didn't help H's food allergies that we've recently discovered that she has.

My mom called a month ago and said she was sending us a case of Noni. She'd call and ask, "did you get the Noni? Call me when you get the Noni." It didn't get to us until last week. It apparently didn't get delivered to the old address, and so she renewed the order with our new address. So now we have a whole case of 4, actually 2 whole cases of 4 bottles each, since my sister hasn't picked hers up& I forgot to take it to her today/yesterday. And she probably won't end up with them since she's leaving. I can just hear mom now:

"Did you give Cristy her Noni?"
"Why didn't you give Cristy her Noni? I send you two box. One for you, one for her."

Before leaving Cristy's today, we talked at length about the Noni...here's a tidbit:
me: "You didn't pick up the Noni yesterday before you left."
Cris: "Yeah I forgot. You can just keep it."
me: "Mom bought it for you. One case for you, one case for me. She's been asking me if I got it to you."
Cris: "I don't want to drive out there again just for the Noni. I have to study."
me: "I didn't even think about bringing it. I thought you were going to come by the house before you leave. I didn't know you weren't coming back over."
Cris: "Mom won't care."
me: "Oh she will."
Cris: "Yeah, she probably will. oh well."
me: "oh well...we'll see..."

...and the Noni is still sitting by our front door. Though I did open it before writing this post, and drank a bit. My cough is bad enough for me to be motivated to open up the stuff and drink it. It really doesn't taste that bad.

At one time dh was like, "doesn't she know we don't need it? I don't like the taste."
My reply, "She wants us to have it. It's her way of taking care of us."

It is my mom's way. It's not a cheap ticket item either. I knew it was pricey, but I forgot how pricey. I opened up the box and saw the packing slip - it's like $130 for 4 bottles! So that box of 8 Noni juice bottles that was sitting in the foyer for the past week was like $260 just sitting there...wow. about $40 a bottle. that is steep. (and I thought the epi-pen prescription at a $45 co-pay for three epi-pens was steep.) I should calculate the cost per ounce of Noni...that'd probably make me feel more guilty for not drinking it.

And here's a bit of my dad's way. When I wasn't awake to answer the phone and look up the email for what airline dh was flying...my dad did his way of "finding out." He had the email of flight # and equipment...but the times were wrong...and the airline wasn't clear to him in the email... so apparently dad made a bunch of phone calls to the airport - with a starting point of which airlines used a McDonnell Douglas MD80 and eventually got dh's flight info b/c he showed up just as dh was asking me if my parents knew when he got in.

My parents - they have their quirks and their individual ways of showing love. We love them.